AOL announced a location plug-in for its instant messaging service. Recently, The Economist ran a story “Go with the flow” about using mobile phone data to visualize how people are moving around.
It’s all about location. AOL is working from IP addresses and providing user specific information to display which friends are ‘Near Me’. The Economist story is about a scheme developed at MIT to take advantage of the near ubiquity of cell phones. MIT has also released its WiFi iFind software, another product of its Sensible Cities lab.
MIT has been testing its mobile phone tracking using anonymized data from Telecom Italia and Mobilkom Austria. Their results are said to take the form of luminous maps, with moving colour coded arrows, dots and patches that indicate the density and speed of people. The article suggests
with markets becoming saturated and mobile operators’ revenue-growth slowing… providing information about travel patterns could be a lucrative opportunity for telecoms firms
While some current traffic maps are based on aggregated vehicle GPS data, there is far more information that can be gathered from more person-based information. Pedestrian traffic to help value commercial real-estate; tourism information by tracking where roaming visitors go; traffic lights based on vehicle loads.
How would you use the information and tracking capabilities?
How do users ensure anonymity? Who owns my location data?
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